Tens of millions of refugees are scattered across the globe, many hailing from conflict-ravaged countries such as Afghanistan, Sudan and Syria. Yet according to a new report, the Trump administration has concentrated its refugee operations in a single, comparatively prosperous nation.
Since 2025, Department of Homeland Security refugee agents have operated exclusively in South Africa, where President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed white citizens are under threat, NOTUS reported Thursday. Working through U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, these agents interview applicants and determine whether they qualify for resettlement in the U.S.
The result has been a striking shift in who gets in. By June, 99.9 percent of refugees admitted in fiscal year 2026 — 7,727 out of 7,730 — were from South Africa. By comparison, in the year before Trump took office, just one South African refugee was admitted.
Veterans of the system have said the singular focus on one ethnic group is without precedent.
“To basically repurpose the entire refugee program and concentrate all of its resources on one location for one politically and racially favored group and then exclude everyone else is, frankly, heartbreaking,” Jason Marks, a former USCIS employee, told NOTUS.
“You started to hear, ‘So-and-so’s going to South Africa,’” said Brandon Prelogar, who led the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ International and Refugee Affairs Division at the start of the Trump administration. “It was almost like, are we being trolled here? Is this like a trolling exercise?”
The Independent has contacted USCIS for comment.
As part of his broader crackdown on both illegal and legal migration, Trump suspended the refugee program on his first day back in office, shutting the door on those fleeing war and persecution.
But an exception soon followed. The administration carved out a pathway for South Africa’s Afrikaners — a white minority group descended from European settlers — whom the White House has described as “victims of unjust racial discrimination.”
Trump has claimed that a “genocide” is underway in South Africa, stating that Afrikaners “are being killed and slaughtered, and their land and farms are being illegally confiscated.” Elon Musk, who was born in South Africa during apartheid, has echoed those claims.
During an Oval Office meeting last year, Trump showed South African President Cyril Ramaphosa what he said was evidence of white farmers were under attack. South African officials pushed back, emphasizing that crime impacted all populations.
White South Africans make up roughly 7 percent of the population but own about 75 percent of the land and earn nearly three times the average wage of black workers, according to NBC News. And while Afrikaners have been subject to violence, there is no official data indicating they are disproportionately targeted.
Last year, Ramaphosa signed a controversial law allowing the state to enact land seizures without compensation in circumstances where it is deemed “just and equitable and in the public interest.”
